Installing A Fatman IFS Frame Stub- Addressing The ’49-51 Ford

Installing A Fatman IFS frame Stub

In the past few issues of Street Rodder, we’ve looked into what it takes to bring a ’49-51 Ford coupe up to contemporary drivability standards, including the installation of a new powerplant, steering components, and disc brakes. But all of this work was done with the stock chassis and, specifically, the vehicle’s original front crossmember.

It seems that swapping front stubs on a hot rod goes back as far we can remember. In fact, Street Rodder even ran an article in December of 1973 that showed how to adapt an independent front suspension from a Toyota! Fatman Fabrications, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been building their own line of chassis and suspension pieces since the ’70s and has become a leader in the street rod industry in the process.

In the past few issues Fatman’s owner, Brent VanDerVort, showed us how to update a ’49-51 Ford chassis with parts he and others offer, but this month he walks us through the procedure to completely remove and replace the front clip of a shoebox Ford with one of his company’s affordable IFS frame stub kits. Fatman offers a wide selection of fitment, too, with stub kits from Studebakers to Lincolns, Chevelles to Dodges, and many more in between.

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All you have to do is provide Fatman with your axle centerline and radiator core support measurements and positions (on their website they have a detailed worksheet to help you locate where to take all the measurements) and they’ll build a stub for you. And after the work is done, your old sheetmetal should fit right back to where it was before you started.

The basic Fatman stub kit starts at under $1,000, but various options (such as stainless steel A-arms, coilover shocks, dropped spindles, a sway bar, and more) puts the kit in the $3,000-to-$4,000 range. Still, without the expense of having to blow your body off your chassis and completely disassemble your car to do so in order to get a completely new chassis, this frontend stub kit is a quick and easy way to get contemporary suspension and drivability (read as reliability) without going whole hog.

Also, if you don’t feel like tackling this work at home yourself, you can have the project sent to Fatman Fabrications, as they also offer in-house fabrication and repair work. We followed along during a typical remove-and-replace session at their shop, and the work took less than four hours to do, not counting removing or assembling any of the sheetmetal.